a writer's log

Once again, I’ve attempted and failed at NaNoWriMo. True, there is still half the month to go, and if I really wanted to do it, I could 5-hour energy my way through to the 50K word goal, but I’m well aware that’s just not me.

What intrigues me about this most recent failure is how indicative it is of the way I write. Despite the pleasure that comes from pure imagination, I realize that I cannot write forever in chaos.

Without the boundaries of an outline and progressive drafts of a project, imagination turns into a chaotic fervor of flips and bends to the point that all I have left are almost journalistic horrors of my subconscious.

A year or so ago, a fairy tale I’d attempted for NaNo turned into a dark story about abuse and this year’s story was supposed to allow a dark protagonist to turn from his ways, but 3K words into it, I’d Hannibal Lecter-ized him and removed any possibilities for redemption. I’m not sure why pure imagination keeps leading me down these dark paths, but I’m ready to acknowledge that pure freedom in my writing leads to utter chaos.

The chaos exists outside of the storyline as well. Jumping into a project with no rhyme or reason gives rise to horrible writing and since NaNo seems to be a race against word count, I’m pushed to ignore everything I know I’m doing wrong.

If I learned anything in writing Damen it’s that writing chapters of trash that I’m well aware will have to be scrapped even as I write them does me little good. NaNo’s freedom urges me to forget all the hard lessons I’ve learned over the years and, in the end, the resulting chaos leaves me without the will to even look at meaningful writing, which is where I’ve been for the last week.

All this notwithstanding, I’m glad to have tried and failed once again. In general, I despise failure as it seems so similar to weakness, which I hate even more, but in every failure I rise stronger and ready to accomplish even more than I’d originally set out to do.